British major killed in Afghan renegade attack: ministry

A British major commanding a company of Gurkha soldiers was among 3 servicemen killed on their base in Afghanistan.

A British major commanding a company of Gurkha soldiers was among three servicemen killed on their base in southern Afghanistan by a renegade Afghan soldier, officials in London said.

Major James Joshua Bowman, 34, was shot dead early on Tuesday as he slept in the base in Nahr-e-Saraj district, Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

He was the most senior member of British forces to die in Afghanistan since July last year, when Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe was killed by a roadside bomb.

In Tuesday’s attack, the Afghan soldier also fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the base’s command centre, killing Lieutenant Neal Turkington, 26, a British junior commander with the battalion, and Corporal Arjun Purja Pun, 33, from Nepal. The soldiers were serving with 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles.

Four other soldiers serving with the British army are also understood to have been wounded in the grenade attack. A massive manhunt is under way for the Afghan soldier who carried out the attack.

The commanding officer of the battalion paid tribute to Major Bowman, in the statement released late on Wednesday.

“Our battalion has lost a brave leader,” said Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Strickland. “Since his arrival in Afghanistan, he led his company deep into enemy-controlled territory again and again. It is a bitter irony that after driving the insurgents back throughout his area, he was gunned down as he slept in the supposed security of his patrol base.”

The commander of British forces in Helmand province has insisted the killings would not affect the relationship between Nato and Afghan troops.

“We will not let this aberration knock us off our course to rid this country of the insurgency, and we can only really do that through our Afghan partners,” said Brigadier Richard Felton.

It is not the first time Afghan security forces have turned on British troops - five British soldiers were killed and six injured when an Afghan policeman opened fire on them at a checkpoint in Helmand in November.

A total of 318 British servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan since the military campaign began there in late 2001.

Britain has around 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of an international force fighting the Taliban.

Prime Minister David Cameron has signalled he would like to see British combat troops withdrawing in five years’ time.

Meanwhile, a string of bomb, rocket and gun attacks in southern Afghanistan killed 12 Nato troops in just two days, officials said on Wednesday, throwing the spotlight on the spiralling cost of the war. Of the 12 dead, four were British troops and eight American.

“We’re in the toughest part of this fight,” German army General Josef Blotz, a spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters.

Four US soldiers were killed in a Taliban-style bombing and a fifth by small-arms fire in the volatile south on Wednesday, an Isaf spokeswoman said.

Late Tuesday, Taliban insurgents had set off a car bomb, then fired rockets and small arms into a police base in the southern province of Kandahar, killing three US soldiers and five Afghan civilians.

Afghan police backed by international forces fought back “and prevented insurgents from penetrating the compound perimeter,” Isaf said.

The United States and Nato have 143,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the number due to rise to 150,000 in the coming weeks as international forces step up their campaign against the Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2010.